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120 interests of her children. The sweetness of disposition and kindness of heart which, in her girlhood, had so endeared her to her friends made her relations as wife and mother very beautiful.

The peace and gladness of the Hamilton home were cruelly ended on that fatal July morning, in 1804, when Hamilton lost his life. At his untimely death all America mourned and the terrible sorrow of his family cannot be described. His wife, the "dear Betsy" of his boyhood, survived her husband for fifty, long, lonesome years. When she died, at ninety-seven, a pleasant, sweet-faced old lady, praised for her sunny nature and her quiet humor, a pocketbook was found in her possession. Within it lay a yellow, time-worn letter. It was written on the morning of the duel, and was Hamilton's farewell to his "Beloved Wife."

The wife of Francis Brown is one of the unsung heroines of the Revolutionary War. She was born in 1740, and died in Lexington in 1824. The only biography of her merely states that she was "small in stature, quiet and retiring, of great refinement and of considerable culture." But the descendants of Mr. and Mrs. Francis Brown are many and they have always been prominent or representative citizens in that part of New England. Her husband traced his descent back to earliest Colonial ancestry in the persons of "John Brown and Dorothy his wife," who came to the New World in 1630. The knowledge of the Lexington Minute Men is such as to show that Francis Brown was a man of great decision of character, and well fitted by nature and training to meet the impending crises of that time. In letters treasured by his descendants we find the highest tribute to the true courage of his wife, and of her heroic conduct, when during the war her house was attacked, and after a hasty concealment of her household treasures, she was obliged to retreat to the woods and care for her children there for several days.

Sarah Hull, the wife of Major William Hull, was one of those women who followed their husbands in the response to the Revolutionary call to arms and partook of their dangers and privations. She was the daughter of Judge Fuller of Newton, Massachusetts, and was born about 1755.

While with the army at Saratoga, she joined the other American women